1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wire harness including electrical conductive paths and an outer covering member as components. The present invention also relates to a method for inserting electrical conductive paths through a wire harness.
2. Description of the Related Art
Examples of a conventional wire harness include a wire harness that electrically interconnects high-voltage devices installed in a hybrid vehicle or an electrical vehicle.
A wire harness disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-224156 is composed by including three high-voltage electrical wires and three outer covering members used for separately accommodating and protecting these three high-voltage electrical wires. Each outer covering member is a metal pipe having a circular cross-section. After the high-voltage electrical wire is inserted through the outer covering member, the outer covering member undergoes a bending process so as to be suited to the shapes of places in which the wire harness is routed. The number of times the bending process is performed equals to the number of outer covering members.
A wire harness disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-66825 is composed by including three high-voltage electrical wires and one outer covering member used for collectively accommodating and protecting these three high-voltage electrical wires. The outer covering member is a metal bellows pipe, and the three high-voltage electrical wires are inserted through this single outer covering member. After the insertion, the outer covering member undergoes a bending process so as to be suited to the shapes of places in which the wire harness is routed.
As the outer covering member, a member being rather large and having a circular cross-section is used so as to allow the three high-voltage electrical wires to be collectively inserted. The outer covering member is formed in the same cross-sectional shape continuously from one end thereof to the other end thereof.
In the case of the wire harness disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-224156, three high-voltage electrical wires have to be separately housed into the respective outer covering members, and this makes the work very laborious. In consideration of this inconvenience, an outer covering member through which three high-voltage electrical wires can be collectively inserted, such as the one of the wire harness disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-66825, seems effective. However, such an outer covering member may potentially bring the following inconvenience, for example, when it is necessary to route the wire harness on a vehicle floor underside. That is, the outer covering member has a circular cross-section and is rather large, the distance thereof from the ground surface is not sufficient, and therefore may potentially bring an inconvenience that the outer covering member is damaged or broken by a flying stone or at a time of riding on a curbstone.
Adding variations to the cross-sectional shape or the like of the outer covering member according to the shapes of places in which the wire harness is routed and the usage environments may be considered as a resolution to the foregoing inconvenience. However, this resolution inevitably makes it necessary to prepare and selectively use outer covering members of a plurality of kinds, and brings another inconvenience that processes such as a fixation process thereof to high-voltage electrical wires are additionally involved, undesirably resulting in an inconvenience of reduced workability. Furthermore, it is likely that inserting three high-voltage electrical wires is difficult or jamming of an electrical wire occurs in a location where different cross-sectional shapes meet each other, and the inconvenience of reduced workability is brought also when that occurs.